About a year and a half ago I bought a small train set from Toys R Us in Aomori City. It seemed a little small so I bought some extra track for it. Then I thought that maybe it could use another train or two. Well things kind of snowballed from there when I foolishly decided to try to collect all the trains that go through Noheji town. Now I have almost all of them, except for the elusive Super Hakucho which I can only seem to find here. My collection even includes a model of the rare Doraemon Undersea Train. Anyway, until yesterday when I tore it down, my model train set took up an entire bedroom in my ridiculously large apartment! I don't know if or when I'll ever have another apartment with enough space for this thing. What am I going to do?

Today was the last day of classes before the summer break, and my last day of teaching in Japan. At the end of the day I had to give a speech to the whole school in Japanese! I was pretty nervous about it as I somehow managed to avoid learning any Japanese during my three years here. My wonderful supervisor Kaori was kind enough to translate into Japanese a speech I wrote and even helped me with pronunciation. I think I did a pretty good job, but it's hard for me to say for sure. After the speech I was presented with a great big beautiful bouquet of flowers, which made me feel a little "natsukashi" for when I first learned of this custom upon my initial arrival here three years ago. The principal also gave me that cute mini kokeshi doll too.

Just as I was leaving, some students from one of my best classes rushed out to my car and handed me this really nice plaque they made for me. All this love has got me feeling a little vaklempt!

Long ago when I was a junior high school student I had a strange English teacher named Ms. Pennels. When she wasn't screaming at us for no reason, she was making the class memorize and recite over and over a poem called "The Vinegar Man". While I was busy every day reading about the depressing life of the Vinegar Man, my brother was usually playing with Lego or doing other fun stuff with his cool hip teacher Mr. Ward. A few years after I graduated I heard through the grapevine that Ms. Pennels had to leave her job and get professional help. I can't help but wonder if she's now living in a tumble-down shed by the Haunted House surrounded by greasy old records of paid and due.

Anyway, you're probably wondering about the photo. Well that's my vinegar bottle collection, which sadly I must part with today. For those of you not in the know, Canadians (and this Canadian in particular) love to put white vinegar on french fries. I have no idea where this custom comes from, but it doesn't seem to be practiced anywhere else, except maybe in Britain to some extent. In Japan it's really hard to find ordinary white vinegar. Those red capped bottles in the photo are Japanese vinegar, which is made from rice and isn't very good. The rest was either shipped from North America (thanks to my loving parents and Jenny) or purchased at Aomori's only source for vinegar ELM shopping mall in Goshogawara. Not pictured are two large plastic vinegar jugs which I unfortunately threw out before I got the idea to start collecting my empties.

Click 'Read More' to experience "The Vinegar Man" for yourself, or click here for the MP3!:

As you see, I finally got the site back up. It's missing all the posts and comments between the time it went down and the previous time I made a database backup. I'm going to see what I can do about restoring those posts from the bits and pieces stored in RSS readers. Stay tuned.

Last week it was once again time for Sports Day at high schools across Japan. For me, the most interesting part of Sports Day has always been the unique T-shirt designs that the students come up with for their teams. I don't know if its because of ignorance or what, but teachers never seem to be bothered by what the students put on their shirts, no matter how inappropriate it might seem to be. I thought the marijuana shirts from previous years were something else, but the students at one of my schools really topped themselves this time...